Oblivion Episode 1 - The New Kid
by Gabriel Seraph
Summary: This story is inspired by Organization XIII. Great liberties have been taken with names, places, etc. in order to create as original a story as possible. The story focuses on 16-year-old Tim Nemo (a renamed Demyx) as he moves to a new town and new school. But soon, it becomes clear that his adoptive father Ansem has sinister plans involving an underground lab. AU, with some OC's.
1. Chapter 1

Oblivion

Episode 1 - "The New Kid"

Chapter 1

Blue sky. Green grass. White cinderblock walls. Impossibly tall black cypress trees.

Tim decided this was actually a great view, one he could easily get used to. He turned around and looked at the new house. Or, more accurately, new houses. It was a set of four row houses all facing onto Carver Boulevard, with his new school, Ojo de Cielo High, sitting pretty on the other side, behind the curtain of black cypress trees.

Of course, his family only had one townhouse in which to live. And yet, by a truly bizarre coincidence, all four had received new owners at the same exact time. It was vaguely unsettling to Tim. He had grown up with all manner of bizarre coincidences in his life. For example, the fact that they just all of a sudden _had to move_ _to that dull soulless suburb of Blancoville_ within days of Braig's arrival, his scarred face dripping sweat all over the immaculate tile floor of the old house in Sand City. Understandably, Mom had been pissed. But Dad, eternally calm as ever, simply ushered Braig into his office, and they spent a few hours speaking before Dad emerged and announced that they were moving north immediately.

While pulling his guitar case out of the trunk of the steel-gray five-year-old Sonata (a dull car for a dull suburb, Mom reasoned when she bought it just the day before), Tim looked at the row houses once again. His family was moving into the one on the far left. The second house, the one right next door, was also being moved into at that moment, by a couple who looked like what his parents might have been had they not adopted him and his brothers. A mid-height (shorter than Tim, who was himself short for his age at five-eight) man, with silvery hair just like Dad's, hefting a large crate of books up the box steps onto the little porch, through the sliding door to the left of the actual front door, and out of sight. The front door opened, revealing a tall but slightly plump blond woman, like Mom with a few added inches of height and width, who removed a box from the flat-green minivan (Tim wondered if this was even their minivan, especially since they seemed to have no kids of their own) and almost immediately dropped it as she could barely handle its weight. Glinting knives and other silverware spilled out all over the sidewalk.

"Hey, Enzo!" cried the woman. "Get out here and help me with the utensils!"

"Hang on a second, Lara!" Enzo responded, faintly, from the second-floor window. "Let me put down the books."

Tim turned away and proceeded to lower his guitar case onto the ground. He ruffled his overgrown blond hair, to see if it had gone back to pointing straight up even after being flattened against the inside of the trunk lid. It had. Of course.

"Tim, get in here!" yelled his younger brother, 14-year-old Rocky. "Or do you want me to call the bedrooms instead?"

Tim shook his head to clear his thoughts. Burying them all inside his mental vaults, he lifted the guitar case onto the sidewalk, up the box steps past the mailbox (under which Dad had already slapped the solar-powered night light reading "Nemo") and into the house. He then climbed the stairs up to the second floor, where there were two bedrooms to choose from. Tim chose the one with the street view. It would be noisy, but the view would more than compensate. Placing his guitar on the floor at the foot of one of the two twin beds, he looked out the window again, just in time to see a flashy pinkish-lavender Cadillac XLR convertible parallel-park behind Enzo and Lara's boxy Nissan minivan. The top was down, allowing Tim to see the car's two occupants, a tall thin man with long hair the exact shade of his car, and a tall beefy redheaded man. _Gay couple_, guessed Tim. _Oh well. At least Braig will get to make some new friends._

"Dude, what are you doing?" Tim turned around to see his twin, wearing a faded red wife-beater that clashed spectacularly with his ruby-colored hair, which was otherwise just like Tim's – unable to lie flat, and unmanageably thick, so it seemed to float off his head in spikes. "I think you can enjoy the view later. Go down and get the posters. Most of them are yours anyway."

Tim sighed. "Okay, Axel."

Axel nodded, then crossed over to one of the beds. Predictably, it was the one closer to the window. Tim sighed again. _Guess now we know why he went out for football back home. Competitive, and unable to give an inch for anything or anyone_. He left the room and went downstairs to fetch his posters.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Tim lifted the stack of posters from the trunk of Mom's Sonata, carried them back upstairs, and undid the velcro strap binding them together. Tossing Axel's posters onto his bed, he started putting up his own with brass tacks. Endless Summer, Rush Time Machine Tour, and a Katniss poster from _The Hunger Games_ all in a row. Unfortunately, Axel came in right when Tim was putting up his favorite poster - _Buffy The Vampire Slayer_. Axel couldn't even stifle his loud snicker. Tim raised his eyebrow at his twin. In between gasps of laughter, Axel spluttered out, "Buffy? Really? Should you be buying tampons anytime soon?"

Tim raised his middle finger. Not exactly the best idea, but even if Axel noticed, he was just too busy laughing to care. "I thought...you'd gotten rid of...that poster before we left!"

"No," Tim responded, flatly. "And Buffy's not just for girls. If it was, do you think they'd have put lesbian witches on that show?"

Axel laughed even harder. "Lesbian witches are a boy's worst nightmare, Timmy. Gotta look out for them. They don't like boys. They'll be more than happy to put a nasty little spell on them if they misbehave!" For effect, Axel jumped on Tim, knocking him to the floor. Tim wriggled away, got to his feet, and dusted off his fake-dirty blue jeans.

"Dude, don't be ignorant." _And don't call me Timmy_, thought Tim. _You only called me that before you became a total bully._

Tim scrambled out of the room and down the stairs to get his clothes out of the car - only to almost barrel straight into a group of people he didn't recognize. It was a family of four. Tall, heavy silver-haired dad, short, heavy black-haired mom, and two kids - a tall blond boy, maybe a year older than Tim and Axel, and a little black-haired girl the same age as Rocky. The parents were each bearing a large bowl of dessert - multiple layers of different colored gelatin, smooshed between thick layers of cream. _Not very original, but it sure beats those awful Jello molds new neighbors are supposed to get, _Tim thought.

"Hello, new neighbors!" cried the dad, in a voice thick with a European accent of some kind. French, maybe, or German. "My name is Saix Claymore, we live in the house at the other end of the row. This is my wife Linda, our son Lucien, and our daughter Xion - with an X," he added. "Am I to understand this is the house of Nemo?"

Tim blinked in surprise. He wasn't very much used to people who were so overtly friendly towards others. They had no idea what they were in for, if they ever met his parents. Then again, perhaps they would just shrug off the cold iciness of Ansem and Vexen Nemo, like the Avon lady from _Edward Scissorhands_.

Recovering from his startled state, Tim put on a smile and introduced himself to the Claymores. The mother and daughter were just as friendly and exuberant as Saix, but Lucien was anything but. He was very muscular - probably an athlete, like Axel - and his handshake was stronger than the average vise. He merely nodded in response to Tim, rather than say hello like Linda and Xion, and kept an ugly scowl fixed on his face. _At least someone is being honest_, Tim thought.

"Excuse me a sec," Tim said to the Claymores, before calling into the kitchen, "Mom! Neighbors are here!" Turning back to the neighbors, he said, "I have to go outside, still have to unpack. But my mother would _love_ to meet you guys!" _I hope my smile isn't too much,_ Tim thought ruefully. _It usually is._ But apparently, it was not, because they all smiled back - except Lucien, of course; all he did was rotate his shoulder underneath his skintight thermal shirt, made to look like a king of spades.

Tim went back outside and lifted the black garbage bag containing his clothes out of the trunk. By now it was empty, so he closed it. Down the street, the two men with the wild hair struggled to lift a large wooden plank out of the tiny trunk of the Cadillac. Tim wondered how it could possibly fit in there, especially with the hardtop down. _Did they pay $5000 for the Dimension-Breaking Storage Package or something?_ As he humped the garbage bag inside, he heard the men arguing loudly, like cats in a bag. Something about flowers being left behind on the balcony in the Castro, and why didn't we buy the Escalade and get more cargo space for the same price. Otherwise uninterested in this petty fight, Tim moved on. But as he climbed up the stairs, he stopped in his tracks, as his brain had just registered something his eyes had picked up on but barely noticed.

There was an axe of some kind on that big plank.

Tim had to wonder if he was just being paranoid, or if Axel had secretly slipped him some hallucinogen in his tea before they left that morning. He wouldn't really put it past him. After all, Dad used to grow belladonna in the garden back in Sand City. But there was no garden here, not with a busy thoroughfare in front and a narrow alley in back - with more townhouses on the other side. It was a small group of townhouses, but they all looked the same, something Tim didn't like. He preferred uniqueness and creativity.

Suddenly, he lost his balance and nearly fell backwards, barely regaining his footing two steps below as Axel muscled his way back down. "Move it, dorky boy," Axel grumbled. "Mom called me. _Must. Be. Of. Grave. Importance._"

Rubbing his sore shoulder, Tim emptied the garbage bag onto his bed, and set to work sorting his clothes into the drawers. At least Axel wasn't here to claim the drawers the way he'd claimed his bed. So Tim took the top two rows, leaving Axel the bottom rows so he'd be forced to crouch every morning to get his beloved wife-beaters. After this, Tim crossed over to the bed and opened his guitar case -

- only to find the strings all snapped in two.

"Oh, shit!" Tim cursed furiously. He'd just re-strung his guitar two weeks ago! Obviously Axel had done it to get at him, probably sneaked into the car while Tim was otherwise distracted, and opened the case to do his damage. _What an asshat_.

Tim stormed out of the room, just as Rocky emerged from his room across the hall. "Don't let Dad hear you cussing like that, Timmy," he said.

"Put it on my tab," Tim responded. "God, since when did we have a swear jar?"

He went downstairs, to hear a surprising amount of laughter from the kitchen. From four people. Apparently, the Claymore family had been able to (at least temporarily) thaw out Mom's frigid self. Axel and Lucien, meanwhile, were sitting on the couch in the living room, chatting away about sports or something similar. "Hey Timmy, have you met Lucien?" Axel asked, strangely brightly.

"We've met already," Lucien said, marginally happier than when he'd entered the house.

"He goes to Ojo de Cielo, too," Axel said. "He's a junior, just like us, Timmy. He says he'll be happy to show us around tomorrow. It's our first day tomorrow, you know that, right?"

"Yeah," Tim said shortly. He turned back to the door.

"Where are you going?" asked Axel.

"The coffee cart down the street," Tim said. "I need a freaking drink."

"Double shot espresso, half-caff vanilla mocha latte with two pumps of toffee?"

"No. Just the mocha."

"I know," Axel said. "I just gave you my order. Chop chop, barista boy."

Tim didn't go down to the coffee cart, though. He just sat on the porch, fuming. They'd just barely arrived in Blancoville - that personality-free zone sandwiched neatly between the gleaming high-tech Valley of a Thousand Chips and the gritty oil-soaked streets of Beachland - and already Axel was going out of his way to piss him off royally. Things were not looking good. At all.

After an hour or so, Tim returned inside and sat on his bed, listening to the laughter from the kitchen - which was now even louder, as Dad had joined in sometime while Tim was on the porch. Who knew Ansem Nemo could produce belly laughter like that? By 9:00, the Claymores had finally left the house, and Axel returned to the room, sat on his bed, opened his laptop, and went to NBC's website to watch last night's episode of _Revolution_ which they had missed. It was one of the only things Tim and Axel had in common.

While Axel waited for the video to load, Tim opened his guitar case again, and pretended that he just saw the broken strings for the first time. He asked Axel if he'd done it, but Axel said no. Unbelievably, he wasn't trying not to laugh as he did so, making Tim believe that maybe his evil twin wasn't so evil after all. _But then, who did break the strings?_

After the twins finished their show, they went to bed. Tim had a hard time getting to sleep - he always did, because it was always too hot for him (even in the colder, oceanic climes of Sand City, and here in Blancoville it was far warmer), and he didn't want to strip down to his underwear in front of Axel. He was very self-conscious about his short, skinny body, for obvious reasons_. _The fact that he was starting class in a completely new school the next day did nothing to alleviate his stress. It was 12:06am, Wednesday morning, before Tim finally was able to close his eyes and drift off.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Tim only got about six hours of sleep before the alarm clock blasted its piercingly loud beeps through the room. He and Axel got dressed, woke up Rocky (who refused to use an alarm clock), went downstairs to grab a quick breakfast (one muffin each) and then went across the street to Ojo de Cielo High for the first time. Their parents weren't there. They were always gone by 6am, off to work somewhere. At least they weren't waking up at four anymore. The commute to their office in Santa Marina was considerably shorter from Blancoville.

Inside the office, the brothers all got their class schedules and their pictures taken for their school ID cards. They were also each given a locker - apparently three of them had just been freed up, because the former users of these lockers had been expelled for drug use or something like that. The boys then walked into the wide central room of the school, a round room with a high domed ceiling supported by concrete pillars that no doubt would not survive a major earthquake. Crossing the blue and white linoleum, Tim reached his own locker, which was at the far end of the round room, next to the counselor's office. He found it papered over by a flyer urging people to vote for Dana Wu and Martine Pinay for junior class president and VP. Seeing no point in decorating his locker this way, Tim removed the flyer. It was then that he noticed that the entire row of lockers had similar flyers all over it. He started removing a few more from the lockers around his, then turned around and trashed them.

Opening his locker, he saw nothing inside but a number of old stickers that had resisted all attempts to remove them. Most were faded beyond recognition, but at least two of them were advertising WILD 94.9 radio.

"Don't ever listen to that station," said a voice behind him. "Unless you want your brain to drip out your ears. It's a wonder people can withstand that crap rap."

Tim turned around to see a red-haired girl with black-framed rectangular glasses reaching towards the locker right next to his. She stopped short as she realized something else - "Hey, did you take down all those Wu and Pinay flyers?" Tim nodded. "Well, thank God for that and thank you too. I am sick of seeing those two assbutts and their too many flyers. They don't even need the flyers. Everyone's voting for them anyway, and they're totally unopposed. How they ever got a 100% popularity rating, I have no idea."

Tim closed his locker. It wasn't like he had anything to put in there at the moment anyway. He had no textbooks, no binders, and only one notebook so far. Maybe later he would fill it up. Before heading off to his first class (US History), he took a look at the other side of the room, where Axel was opening his locker, in an area that clearly seemed to be filled to the brim with popular kids, if the shiny hair and bright colored, expensive-looking clothes were anything to go by. _Should I consider him lucky?_ Tim thought to himself. _He is kinda in his element there, after all_.

After US History (where the class was ridiculously fast-paced, mostly because the teacher was dangerously manic), Tim went to AP French. His parents had tried to arrange for him to take the AP history class as well, but the teacher had pointed out that he would have a difficult time to keep up because the class was extremely fast and had already seen a 10% dropout rate in less than a month. This was followed by English, in a room inhabited by a decidedly oddball teacher - a tall woman with dyed-black hair and a long duster-type raincoat to match. The room was decorated with tattered posters from a number of movies and TV shows (most of them featured Heath Ledger as the Joker), and also, for some reason, an internal window that would otherwise look onto the classroom next door, if not for the Gir blanket covering it up. The teacher handed Tim a copy of the book they were just about to start reading - _Death of a Salesman_. As with everything else in the room, the book had experienced serious wear and tear. The spine was supported by bright lime-green duct tape, which reeked of glue and age - maybe it was moldy.

Looking up from the smelly old book, Tim finally noticed the person who had just entered the room and took her seat behind him. It was the redheaded girl whose locker was next to his. Almost instinctively, Tim looked away. He hated looking at people, especially looking them directly in the eye. Sixteen years of living under the fearsome parentage of Ansem Nemo had taught him that.

In any case, the girl seemed strangely unaffected. She simply looked back at Tim and said, "Hey, 94.9. Survived two periods already?"

"Yeah." Tim looked back up. "But you've no doubt survived hundreds more."

"Touche," responded the girl. "Wow, are we a snarky boy today, or what?"

Tim looked away, embarrassed. _Stupid, stupid, stupid, _he thought. _I really have got to turn down the sarcasm._

"I'm Ashley Aspen," the girl said. "What's your name?"

"Uhhh..." Tim had decided he didn't want to play up the fact that he was related to one of the world's most famous CEOs. But then, it wouldn't hurt to tell the truth about his name, at least. "Tim. Tim Nemo."

Ashley raised her eyebrow. "Nemo? Not related to the famous Ansem Nemo, are you?"

Tim shook his head. "No. But as you can imagine, I get that a lot."

* * *

Down in Santa Marina, at the offices of Nemo Consumer Technologies, Philippa the secretary nervously pushed the speed-dial button for the boss's private line. "Sir, uh, I think you might want to know...the police are here."

"Police?" Ansem Nemo's deep voice was rendered metallic by the phone's cheap speakers. "Local, state, or federal?"

"Local, I think. They're already on their way up to the office, they just say they need to ask questions."

"Okay, thank you, Philippa," said Ansem, terminating the connection. Two minutes later, the elevator opened, admitting two dressed-to-the-nines detectives (one male, one female) into Ansem's penthouse office.

"Mr. Nemo? I'm Detective Barrett, SMPD," the female detective (a slender, almost boyish-figured woman in a pinstriped black pantsuit) began. Gesturing to her wall-sized male counterpart, she went on, "This is Detective Gilmour. We're here to ask about your company president, Braig Bidos. We understand he hasn't been seen in about a week."

"Yes," said Ansem. "Has he been found yet?"

"No," answered Gilmour. "In fact, that's why we're here. We think you may have knowledge of his whereabouts." Gilmour reached inside his coat and pulled out a high-def photograph, probably from a security camera judging from the high angle. In the photograph, Braig Bidos, a man with scars all over the left side of his face - due to an industrial accident twenty years earlier - was getting into a sleek black Lamborghini sports car. Ansem looked up at the detectives. "So? What does this have to do with anything?"

"This was taken six hours later," Barrett said, producing a picture of her own. It was from the same camera angle, and this time Ansem was very visible as he emerged from the Lamborghini's passenger seat. "Based on these pictures, you were the last known person to have seen Braig Bidos. Care to comment, Mr. Nemo?"

"What is this, _The O'Reilly Factor_?" Ansem responded. "I see nothing out of the ordinary about these photos."

Barrett sighed. "If this is _The O'Reilly Factor_, as you say, then this would be the No Spin Zone. Stop trying to spin this, Mr. Nemo. Corporate giants are not above the law. Tell us, have you seen Mr. Bidos since he...went incommunicado?"

"No," Ansem said shortly. "And frankly, I'm surprised at you for asking me this, and using such poor-quality 'evidence,' too. Those people in those pictures could be anyone."

"Poor-quality?" Barrett was startled. "But-"

Ansem raised his voice very slightly, so it seemed to echo within the office. "_This is not evidence._ I am not in these pictures, and neither is Mr. Bidos. You are looking too hard into ordinary camera footage - from nowhere near this building, either. Our building's cameras do not record grainy VHS footage like this."

Barrett and Gilmour looked back at the photos, and blinked in surprise. Ansem was right - suddenly the glorious true-tone colors had desaturated, and the Lamborghini appeared to be parked on a downtown street with a light-rail train passing by. The light rail lines went nowhere near NemoConTech.

"What?" Barrett could not contain her shock. "Oh, Mr. Nemo, I'm so sorry about all this. Our informant must have been...mistaken."

"Very much so," added Gilmour.

Ansem nodded. "Not to worry." The echo had vanished from his voice as he warmed up to the cops. "An understandable mistake. But you should always remember never to jump to conclusions. Now are we done? Forgive me, but I need to make an urgent call to my Frankfurt office."

"Of course, sir," Gilmour said. It was a very odd sight, the two detectives actually bowing obsequiously to the CEO as they left.

As they left, Ansem pulled out his cell phone, turned on the high-end 256-bit encryption, and dialed a number.

"Mr. Nemo? Is that you?" The voice on the other end was gravelly, due to an industrial accident almost twenty years earlier.

"Braig." Ansem was short and to the point. "The police came looking for you. They had evidence."

"Well, why worry, Ansem? They'll never find me, or make any connection between you and my disappearance."

"You never know," Ansem said. "They almost undid everything with this one. Someone gave them a picture of you and me getting out of the car together...six days ago. You know what that could mean."

"Hey, relax," Braig said. "It's me they want, not you. I'm the one who has to be careful here. All you have to do is buy the police and you're golden. But for me...it'll be a miracle if they stop looking."

Ansem smiled very slightly. "I can most certainly arrange that."

"Thanks a lot," Braig said.

Ansem was about to close his phone when he realized something. "Wait a minute. Braig...how did you get this call? Where are you?"

"I'm sorry!" Braig cried. "I know you told me to stay in the lab, but your crazy wife hasn't gotten the food yet, and I was getting hungry."

"Just get back underground," Ansem grumbled. "Don't come out again until I say it's safe. I'm pretty sure you don't want to be caught." Ansem hung up abruptly, and placed his phone back on the desk. Then he clenched his fists to hide the strange white glow shining from his fingertips. _Must not lose control. If that had happened in front of the cops, that would have been an unstoppable disaster._ He then opened his desk drawer, and took a look at the small box of steel guitar strings he was keeping inside it. _I think Tim will like his guitar much more now. And maybe he'll figure out why I bought and modified it for him in the first place._


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Tim cycled through his second half of the day with art, physics, and pre-calculus classes, but he felt like he was only going through the motions. He was pretty disappointed that Ashley Aspen wasn't in any of his other classes. For whatever reason, Tim found himself very interested in her. He'd never been much for intimate relationships or attractions before, but there was something...intriguing...about Ashley. Maybe it was her red hair. Or her glasses. Or her surprisingly high sarcasm tolerance. Or perhaps the fact that she maybe, just maybe, seemed to like-

"Tim!" Ashley called out just as he was opening the doors to the outside. "Hey, Tim, wait up a second!" Tim stopped as Ashley raced up to him, cheeks flushed with exertion.

"What's up?" asked Tim.

"Well...I don't know if you're really up to this, but..." Ashley nervously twirled a strand of hair around her finger. "There's a dance coming up next Friday night. I don't really wanna go, but I lost a bet with my girlfriend and now I have to...so...would you wanna go with me?"

"Depends," said Tim. "What bet did you lose?"

"That's private business between me and my girlfriend."

"Well, when you put it that way..." Tim pretended to think about it. "Okay. But just because you're the only one who's even bothered trying to make contact with me today."

"Thank you so very much!" Ashley barely managed to contain her fangirly squeak of delight.

"Wait a sec," Tim said. "What's with the 'girlfriend' stuff? You're not using me as...whatever boys are supposed to be instead of the beard...are you?"

"I think that would make you the boobs. And no, she's not that kind of girlfriend."

"Oh good," Tim said. "Can't let myself be tricked like that."

Ashley smirked. "Well, I hope you're not tricking me like that."

Tim was thrown by this for a moment, but was soon able to deliver an answer: "No, but if you wanna be a beard, date my brother."

"Not the football jock!" cried Ashley. "How does he survive in the locker room?!"

Tim nodded. "Yeah," he said, incredibly deadpan. "He's constantly bullying me to remind me of what will happen if I out him."

At this point, Ashley realized Tim was joking. But she still had one last word to give: "Oh joy. All hail the homoerotic sport of kings."

Tim was still chortling as he crossed the street and unlocked the door to his new house. He saw, as he climbed up to the second floor, that Rocky had beaten him home (as evidenced by the key dropped on the floor outside his bedroom door, because Rocky was unable to keep track of things in his pockets) and was already in the shower. So he retreated to his room and sat on his bed. He took another look at his guitar, and tried to strum a few bars - but with the broken strings it came out as an un-musical mess. He hung his head. What a way to deflate his mood. He really should have started up on his homework, but he found himself unable to. Tim had always been a big procrastinator. It was perhaps his biggest flaw. That, and his tendency to come off as creepy when he was trying to make friends with people.

A few hours later, Mom laid out plates of pasta salad on the table for the whole family. _Never let it be said that the Nemos ever treat themselves at dinner._ As Tim was about to leave, Dad called him back for a second. "Tim, I believe your guitar strings were broken. Well, I was able to get you some new ones before we left."

Tim gasped under his breath. "What the...how did you know?"

Dad smiled. "I saw your brother vandalizing it right before we left. Rest assured he will be punished for it."

Axel stared. "What? No I didn't. Tim, tell him I-"

Tim turned to his twin. "How do I know you weren't lying when I asked you last night?"

"Axel, come along with me," said Dad, calm as ever. "I think you should really learn your lesson for this one. Property damage is not something we take lightly."

An hour later, Axel walked back up into the bedroom while Tim applied the new strings to his guitar. "Way to defend me, asshole," Axel grumbled. "You just wanna score some brownie points with Dad, is that it?"

"No," said Tim. "It's just that it's impossible to convince him he's wrong. You know that as well as I do."

Axel rolled his eyes and flipped Tim off. Ignoring the rude treatment, Tim asked, "What did Dad do to you, anyway?"

Axel glared at Tim, while flipping an ancient Pearl Jam CD between his fingers. "Let's just say we might have to find some other time and place to watch _Revolution_. He took the hard drive from my computer, said he was gonna recycle it. Gotta use my allowance money to replace it. Do you know how expensive those things are? And I was gonna take this hot girl to the dance too. How do I explain to her that I'm gonna be flat broke for a month? God, we coulda been adopted by anyone. Why did it have to be the biggest freaking dickhead CEO asshole the world's ever known?!" Enraged, Axel threw the CD across the room, and it cracked in two against Tim's Buffy poster.

Tim bent over, picked up the broken CD, threw it away, and went back to his guitar strings.

* * *

10pm Thursday night. Ansem Nemo opened the closet in the third-floor master bedroom, approached the back wall, and pressed his hand to the cold sheetrock. A hidden panel disappeared, opening onto a small, cuboid elevator. Ansem pressed the single button on the wall panel and the elevator descended, deep underground.

He emerged in a large, sterile, well-lit lab space filled with computers and microscopes and multitudinous other equipment. In the center of the lab, in pride of place, lay a large egg-shaped steel pod.

His wife, Vexen, was working studiously at a computer directly in front of the pod. Ansem announced his presence by raising his hands and leaching the light from the overhead fluorescent tubes, into his hands, where it disappeared into his sleeves. He handed Vexen the hard drive he had confiscated from Axel's laptop, and she immediately slipped it into her desk drawer. Ansem then turned to the pod, now faintly shining green, and keyed in a long, thirteen-digit code on the keypad to the front of it.

The steel surface of the pod slid off, revealing a Plexiglas inner pod containing a glowing green liquid. Suspended in the liquid was a man, connected to a respirator that fed his lungs oxygen, and with an octopus-like network of tubes working blood into the chest cavity - doing all the pumping that a heart would do, if the man had one. The most disturbing thing of all was, the man was six feet tall, sinewy, with dark skin and silver hair.

In short, he looked exactly like Ansem.

Ansem smiled, then closed the steel pod. He released the light back to the fluorescents, illuminating the lab once again. Before leaving, he turned to Vexen, who had just opened an empty computer case and began adding Axel's hard drive to it. He said, "Be sure to buy some food to keep down here, dear. Braig was going a bit...stir-crazy today."

Vexen nodded and resumed her fiddling with the computer's innards as Ansem entered the elevator and left.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

On Thursday morning, Axel hurried off behind the school (where all the criminal elements hung out) to see if he could hawk some of his old CD's for money to offset the losses he would have to sustain in order to pay for his new hard drive - the proceeds would, of course, go towards Axel's ticket to Homecoming. Tim, meanwhile, had something else on his mind, something a little less social in nature.

Like many high schools, Ojo de Cielo required its students to complete 40 hours of community service learning as a graduation requirement. As new student juniors, Tim and Axel only had to complete 20. (Poor Rocky, on the other hand, was only a freshman and therefore had to go the whole hog.) Tim had an idea about where he could possibly do his hours - the library. A sign on the door read, "Student Volunteers Wanted - book checkouts, taking printing money, and more!" Tim walked in and approached the librarian, who approved him after asking him when he would be able to show up to help (pretty much every break period, he said.) The librarian then demonstrated to him how to use the checkout program on the computer, and even let him do the last one on his own before the bell rang and Tim had to head over to history class.

A couple of hours later, in English, Tim sat down by Ashley Aspen again. The teacher immediately launched into a reading of _Death of a Salesman_ (with some of the other students filling in various roles.) As everyone laughed at the line about Happy taking Biff on a date, Tim started thinking about his own forthcoming "date" with Ashley. A date in the broadest sense of the word, really. _Not like we're going steady_, he thought, his eyes tracing the shapes of individual strands of her red hair. _No senor. She's not my girlfriend. She's not my girlfriend. She's not my- oh, who am I kidding? She is my girlfriend! Isn't that how you define the word? Some girl you go out on a date with. Right? And isn't this a date, after all? Dear God, why am I thinking all this crap? Have I devolved to age nine, gone back to grade school where boys and girls aren't supposed to be friends and-_

The bell rang, interrupting Tim's worrying thoughts. He tucked the smelly duct-taped book into his backpack. _Man, does this thing need an air freshener,_ he thought, his brain finally decelerating back to normal.

The rest of the day was, like Wednesday, largely uneventful. The only thing really of any consequence was that, before he started working behind the library desk at lunch, Tim stopped to check out the new James Patterson novel, _Confessions of a Murder Suspect. _He had begun reading it the same day that Braig had come to the house, the same day Dad had announced the move to Blancoville. Patterson was one of Tim's favorite authors, and this book was fast becoming one of his favorites from Patterson - largely because he identified a great deal with Tandy Angel, the daughter of rich businesspeople who were all but indifferent to her and her siblings, and tried to raise them in ways that would really push the bounds of human endurance. _Sound familiar?_ Tim thought, as if someone out there could hear him.

At 3pm, after spending a half-hour behind the library desk after school, Tim headed back across the street. As he approached his door, the pink-haired character from the third townhouse was approaching the identically-colored convertible. Spotting Tim, the man called, "Hey there! You one of the new neighbors?"

Tim was momentarily thrown by the man's voice. He had expected it to be very high-pitched and feminine, but he didn't expect it to actually sound like that of a woman. It certainly didn't have that awful Valley-Girly drawl to it that Tim had heard time and again coming from the mouths of horrifically stereotypical gay men on reality TV. This was the voice of a real person, one not trying to play up a typecast character for the entertainment of millions.

He responded, "Uh, yeah. I'm Tim Nemo."

Pinkie moved forward. "Nemo? Like, Ansem Nemo of NemoConTech?"

"Yeah," Tim stage-whispered. "But don't tell anyone, okay? I don't like people to know."

"Oh well. Can't blame a woman for asking." _So she is a woman after all, _Tim thought.

"Marley Flowers," she said, offering her hand. "Like Bob Marley, but obviously not related. It's actually short for Marluxia. What my parents must have been thinking...or, were they even thinking at all?" Tim and Marley shook hands. "You know, you ought to come over sometime. Me and Alexis, we're always hoping to meet some new people. We got so lonely living in the Castro, beautiful living spaces, but nobody to connect with, if you know what I mean..." Marley sighed. "Whatever. Move on, eh? You got homework to do, Tim?"

"Yeah, I gotta go, math test, studying, et cetera," Tim lied. (He did have a math test, but he had no real intention of studying. He hated math, at least the math they taught in school. It was a most impersonal dialect he didn't care to learn.)

"Well, I've gotta go down to the nursery. I wish we hadn't sold the apartment to those awful frat-boy types. Can you believe this, I forgot my rosebush and I go back to collect it, and it's lying on the sidewalk with all the soil and the pot scattered everywhere! Barbarians. Maybe in six months that dull porch will be a beautiful little mini-garden..." Marley's voice trailed off as Tim went inside to get back to trying out his brand-new guitar strings.

_Wow, that Marley is...talkative, _Tim thought. _Maybe Braig might still get to make some friends after all._


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The days went by, each feeling increasingly monotonous. Tim was unpleasantly reminded of that god-awful Friday song, as each day came and went but his world remained hopelessly confined to that one square block of Carver Boulevard. _Yeah, it's official. I DO want this weekend to end._ At least Axel was able to get a decent price for two of those Pearl Jam discs he didn't listen to anymore (technically, they were Tim's but he allowed Axel to sell them because he no longer listened to the CD's either.) However, he still had two dilemmas to confront. One, he hadn't yet decided which girl he wanted to take to the Homecoming dance. Two, he had no idea how he could do it without Dad finding out. Tim, on the other hand, had easily received permission, so long as he came home by no later than 10pm.

Entering the school on Monday morning, Tim found it almost unrecognizable. The entire central round room had been taken over by four huge decorative displays, each one built by one of the classes for Spirit Week, and each one with its own theme. The Forks Freshmen (a _Twilight_ theme, very crudely decorated with excessive glitter and "fur" that was obviously a bunch of feather boas glued together), the Toy Story Sophomores, and the CSI Seniors. But it was the junior class theme that made Tim want to puke.

Outrageously bright psychedelic colors were splashed all over the butcher paper on the floor, on which sat a number of tie-dye Beanie Baby bears, all with John Lennon-style sunglasses attached. Rainbow wigs were plastered to a large propped-up plywood board, on which was emblazoned the slogan, "Jumpadelic Juniors." The "jump" part was represented by yet more bears, who appeared to be double-dutching as they were suspended from old, frayed-ended jump ropes by very narrow, flimsy sticks of hot glue, connected (redundantly) by hot glue. The effect was hideous, and yet a number of juniors - including Dana Wu and Martine Pinay - were proudly posing in front of it, even as the Forks Freshmen paraded around the room, chanting "One-Six!" and blowing into loud vuvuzelas. Their biggest and beefiest boys (who all appeared to have gone through puberty early) stood in front, and, armed with muscle shirts and temporary tattoos, batted away the trash that the juniors (and, to a lesser extent, the seniors) threw at their class.

Tim was so disgusted by the display that he didn't even bother going to his locker. He simply sat as far away from the center of the school as possible. Ashley joined him, hands over her ears in a futile attempt to block out the sounds of the vuvuzelas and chanting, which were soon joined in by an overwhelmingly loud dubstep track.

"Now do you see what we're up against?" Ashley wrote on a piece of spare paper (there was no way she and Tim could speak over the noise).

"I see," Tim responded.

"Just wait till Wednesday," Ashley wrote. "That's our class's parade day. You can guarantee they'll make absolute assbutts of themselves and people will love them. We'll probably get first prize this year, because that's what the prize is awarded for."

"Assbuttery?" wrote Tim.

"Exactly," said Ashley.

Just as Ashley predicted, the junior class parade on Wednesday was absolutely intolerable. Even in the library, where Tim and Ashley retreated before school and during lunch, the noise just kept on coming. After the fourth rendition of "What's up, Dallas, what's up? Jump on it, jump on it, jump on it..." echoed from the crowded gym, Tim cracked and opened his Pandora, dialing up the volume to the max as Rush's "Caravan" played to a (very grateful) crowd of ten.

"Did you get the tickets yet?" Ashley asked Tim.

"Yep, just did this morning."

"Is your brother going to the dance?"

"No," Tim said. "Maybe. I don't know. He hasn't found anyone to go out with yet."

"Aww, even the girls don't want him?" Ashley fake-cried. They both laughed at their little joke.

"By the way..." Ashley dropped her voice to a dramatic whisper. "I know your secret, Tim Nemo. You are related to Ansem Nemo. I'm sure of it. Don't deny it."

Tim sighed. "Okay, I give. Ansem Nemo is my dad. But do you see why I don't like to tell people about it?"

Ashley smiled. "Yeah, I do. Don't worry, your secret's safe with me."

_You and Marley Flowers_, Tim thought regretfully. He was starting to wonder if there was any point keeping up the secret anymore.

On Friday, the whole school was required to attend a pep rally at the end of the day. "This is why we fought against Communism," griped Tim as he sat next to Ashley. At least Ashley was able to hear him, she had long since gotten used to the loudness and was able to block out the driving hip-hop. Unfortunately, Tim couldn't. He had a form of synesthesia that made it so he could see the notes of any music in color, with pleasure or pain feelings attached. For him, hip-hop was a blinding white light of pain. And he couldn't block it out, or else he would go completely numb. It was like being put under at the dentist's office.

But, within a few hours, it would be time for the Homecoming Dance, and maybe then they would have real music to play. _Wishful thinking, though_, Tim thought.

* * *

6:42pm Friday. In the underground lab, while Vexen Nemo connected another computer to the server farm to one side of the room, Braig Bidos walked in and wordlessly handed Ansem a box with rattling objects inside. Ansem said, "Cheer up, Braig. Only a few weeks more and soon you'll be free to roam as you please."

On the other side of the room from the server farm, Ansem opened a slot in the wall and poured the box's contents - a number of radioactive-looking, green-glowing rocks - into it. Raising his finger to Vexen, she typed in a command at the computer she just finished setting up, and the rocks were instantly incinerated. The screen above the slot showed a pronounced percentage of cordium vapor within the small chamber behind the slot, but within seconds it started to decrease steeply, as if it were being sucked away. Ansem smiled. _Perfect. All according to plan_.

Upstairs, Axel sat on his bed and stared morosely out the window as Tim put his wallet in his pocket, unaware that a colorless, odorless gas was funneling through the AC vents into not only this room, but every room in all four row houses.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

As far as Tim was aware, Axel was officially not allowed to go to Homecoming. However, he had eventually found a date - none other than Martine Pinay - and he was planning to sneak out of the house five minutes after Tim left.

In the meantime, Tim crossed the street, followed closely by Lucien Claymore. Looking sullen as ever, Lucien looked essentially the same as the day he and Tim had moved into their new homes. He even added a spade-shaped belt buckle to go along with his playing-card shirt. Tim rolled his eyes at the extra accessory. _Yeah, we know you're a man among men. No need to broadcast it further._ Tim stopped to tie his shoe, and Lucien, not really looking where he was going, tripped over him, fell to the ground, and scraped his knees.

Tim dusted off his elbows (which also got scraped as he was crushed under Lucien's weight) and tried to get up. Most surprisingly, Lucien actually helped him, and started apologizing profusely (as profusely as his knees were bleeding, as a matter of fact.)

Tim looked down at Lucien's knees and pointed this out. "Uh, Lucien, you're kinda bleeding. Hope you got industrial-strength detergent."

"What?" Lucien looked down at his knees and grimaced. "Oh. Ouch. Hey, I'm sorry I knocked you over like that. It's too dark this time of night, I can't see jack shit in front of me. You okay, man?"

Tim nodded hurriedly, hoping to get away from the scene as quickly as possible. His paranoia sense had kicked in again, and for good reason. Lucien was being unusually nice, and actually talking without being rude and caustic. _Okay, did his body get hijacked or something?_

"Well, I'm gonna head back home and change, maybe I'll see you later?"

"Yeah, I guess," Tim said.

"Cool," Lucien said, actually putting out his fist so Tim could bump it. Which he did, with a bit of reluctance.

As he walked up to the cafeteria and presented his ID and ticket, Tim decided, once again, he was being excessively paranoid. _Maybe his meat suit did get pirated. It's Homecoming. Everyone's being nicer than usual - to the ones going to the dance, of course_. He spotted Ashley Aspen, who turned around and waved him over to where she was standing by the punch bowl with another girl. _Her girlfriend, I assume_, Tim thought.

* * *

Lucien Claymore hurried back up to his house just in time to see Axel slip out of his own front door. "Hey man," said Lucien. "Thought you said you weren't going to the dance."

Axel snorted as he vaulted the concrete wall around the porch. "Don't you remember, Lucien? I said I was going. My dad can't stop me. And if he does, what's he gonna do, trash my hard drive again? I bought two of 'em just in case."

"Joke's on him then," Lucien laughed.

"So then what are you up to?" Axel asked. "Suddenly got cold feet?"

Lucien punched Axel's shoulder lightly. "Sounds easy to get when your date's Dana Wu, but no. I tripped on the sidewalk, skinned myself, bloodstained my pants. So I'm just going upstairs to change."

Axel nodded. "Okay. Carry on, then."

Lucien smirked. "See you later." He opened his door, climbed the stairs and entered his room to grab a spare pair of pants. His room was a complete and utter mess, with the contents of the various drawers scattered everywhere. _Gotta clean that up later,_ Lucien reminded himself. _I'm not supposed to be a messy boy. The 'rents are gonna get suspicious. And then everything goes to shit. Man, I'm glad everyone's out for the night. Like time was on my side or something._

_Oh wait. It was. It always is._

_Well - _almost _always. It wasn't on my side tonight. But that's neither here nor there. Now to enjoy that Homecoming dance I missed out on. God, I missed out on a lot of my junior year, didn't I?_

* * *

Vexen showed Ansem the readings on her computer screen. The cordium vapor had expanded to fill every space of air in the house. "If only they knew," she said.

Ansem nodded. "Not that they can do anything about it. And not that they would want to. I'm sure they'll all enjoy what happens to them. Now, where the hell is Braig? I hope he didn't escape again."

Vexen pointed across the room, where Braig was sitting at an empty table and munching on a granola bar. "Oh, good," said Ansem. "Now Vexen, could you give me a little...taste?" He opened his mouth as his wife held up her hands and pointed her fingers directly at him. Pale blue vapor emerged from her fingers and solidified into small ice cubes, like little bullets, that shot into Ansem's mouth. His jaws worked for a few seconds as he crunched the cubes and swallowed them.

"Tastes like carbon dioxide." Ansem sneered with disgust. "But I suppose that's not your fault. After all, you can't control the air."

Vexen said, "But this one can." She turned the computer screen towards Ansem, to show him the picture of a tall, heavy middle-aged woman with long black hair.

"Linda Lancer Claymore." Ansem pronounced the name slowly, like each word was liquid metal on his lips. "She will be very useful, but her husband...we will have to watch him. He's too...unpredictable. I can only hope she didn't slip him Number Seven."

"And if she had?" Vexen asked. "Maybe the husband with Number Seven would be able to advance our plans further."

"Well, by the 29th, I assume we will be able to know for sure," said Ansem. "Have faith, Vexen. Nothing would give me more help than faith."


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Ashley turned to Tim as he approached, and introduced her girlfriend, Tara Willows, and Tara's date, Bobby Gunnarson. Tim was very happy to discover that he and Ashley's friends had quite a lot in common, something they found out by playing a little game of random questions.

"Who creates the best shows on TV?" asked Tara.

"Joss Whedon," said Tim, to applause from Ashley and her two friends. Turning to Bobby, he asked him, "Chocolate or vanilla ice cream?"

"Chocolate," said Bobby. Tim smiled as Bobby posed his question: "Beef or cheese?"

Tim gave a random answer to the random question: "Pizza."

Tara laughed out loud at this one. "I see we have an open mind here! Great friend you made here, Ash. Real winner. No sarcasm."

"_Gracias_," said Ashley. "_No sarcasmo_."

The DJ started firing up his CD player, and most unexpectedly, the song that played out to the whole room was not the crap-rap hip-hop Tim had expected. It was instead the highly dance-able rock tune, "Reboot the Mission." Bobby and Tara followed the crowd out onto the floor, while Ashley and Tim stood off to the side, like a small number of like-minded wallflowers. Tim didn't fail to notice that one of these was Axel, who was standing alone by the punch bowl, glaring at Martine Pinay while she danced with another boy. _Dude, I'm so sorry you got stood up,_ Tim thought. _That's my job._

Ashley turned to Tim and asked, "Dude, you wanna dance or what? I can't stay still much longer while this song's playing."

Tim frowned. "But I can't dance."

"Neither can any of these bozos," Ashley laughed. "Myself included. Come on, let's go!" She pulled Tim onto the dance floor, at which point he just decided to let himself go. While blue and green musical notes danced across Tim's field of vision, Tim himself danced with Ashley, around her, her doing the limbo under his arms...they kept their rhythm going surprisingly well. If not for the fact that everyone else was more concerned with themselves and their own dates, everyone else probably would have stopped dancing to let Tim and Ashley go by themselves in the center of the floor. And they probably would have laughed themselves to death while taping the whole thing on their phones, because even in this post-"Gangnam Style" world this kind of dancing was widely seen as silly.

But Tim and Ashley didn't care. As long as nobody saw them, they were happy.

They stopped dancing after the song was over (largely because the DJ seemed to have fulfilled his rock quota and switched over to bland, bubblegum pop). While they hung out by the punch bowl (Axel had long since left), the conversation turned to music, and Bobby asked Tim if he played any instruments. Tim answered, "Yeah, I do guitar."

"Awesome," said Bobby. "Being a three-piece band is no fun."

"Try telling that to Rush," Tim laughed. "Or Muse."

"Well, those bands have two people each handling all the guitars," Tara said. "We don't. All we have is Bobby. But maybe you could join us!"

Ashley nodded along. "Definitely - if you can actually play." She smiled.

Bobby asked Tim for his cell phone, so he could enter his address into it. "My garage, 2pm tomorrow. Don't forget the axe." Tim looked at the screen to see what Bobby had written - 4004 Helado Avenue.

By quarter to nine, the DJ announced that there was time for one final slow dance. Everyone gathered on the floor as he fired up a slow acoustic ballad. Tim and Ashley danced together, a little more gracefully this time.

"Hey," Tim said, as he recognized the song. "Thought the DJ ran out of good stuff to play."

"Think of it like a sandwich," Ashley said. "The bread tastes wonderful, but the insides taste like shit and diabetes."

"Is that how they usually do it around here?"

"Yeah," Ashley said.

"How would you know? I thought you didn't do any of this school-sanctioned craptastic excuses for kids to make fools of themselves," Tim said.

Ashley giggled. "I lied. Oh boy, I'm a bad girl, aren't I?"

Tim smiled. "Every girl is a bit bad. Pristine-age is just an impossible ideal."

The song ended and everyone started slowly filing out of the room. Ashley hugged Tim goodbye. "See you tomorrow."

"Yeah, can't wait," Tim said. They broke the hug, and he waved to her as they went their separate ways.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Tim walked back across the street closely behind Lucien, who was, unbelievably, whistling "Reboot the Mission" under his breath as he walked. Tim stopped short just short of entering the light cast by the sodium-vapor street lamp, watching this unusual occurrence for a few seconds. _Okay, seriously, some weird shit must be going on_.

The weird shit was only just beginning. Tim went upstairs and got into the shower when it started to kick into high gear. An innocent hand gesture as he put the shampoo in his hair caused an impossibly large amount of water to pour from the showerhead, and collapse onto the floor. Within seconds, it rose up and molded itself into a shape, much like the water tentacle from _The Abyss_.

The shape was that of Tim. It was, quite simply, a water-clone of himself.

Tim stared in shock at his aqua-doppelganger. His mouth dropped open, and so did water-Tim's mouth. He tilted his head, and water-Tim followed, in an exact mirror image. At this point, Tim was shocked enough to jump back against the wall, which water-Tim did as well, only to crash against the knobs and dissolve before flowing down the drain.

Tim stopped the shower, dried off, got dressed, and headed back to his room. "Axel, dude, you're not gonna believe- uh, dude, what are you doing with my posters?" Indeed, Axel was redistributing the posters, putting the Katniss and Rush posters onto the wall by the window, over his bed.

Axel silently removed the Katniss poster, revealing a large, ugly black burn mark on the wall.

"Uh, what-?"

"You know, I thought they taught us everything in health class," Axel grumbled. "Apparently not. They never said anything about our hands catching fire." He gestured at the burn mark. "That's where this came from. Get me another poster, I need to cover this last part here."

While Tim grabbed another poster, he said, "Sorry about your, uh, date. Guess we shouldn't have expected any more from a...politician, huh?"

Axel grunted in reply. A few seconds later, he said, "So what did you wanna tell me?"

Tim paused. "Well...it looks like you're not the only one with some strange new power. Looks like I can make a clone of myself."

"A what?"

"Well, not really a clone, it's made of water." As he finished covering the burn mark, Tim took Axel into the bathroom, ran the sink, and tried to make another clone with a sweeping hand gesture, the way he had accidentally done before. But it didn't work, even after he made the same gesture ten times in a row.

Axel rolled his eyes. "Brilliant. My brother, the waterbender."

Tim said, "Well, if you can't make your hands catch fire again, I guess we're even."

Axel put his fist in Tim's face and stared down at it, as if willing it to catch fire. Like Tim, he failed miserably.

"Whatever, then," Tim said, waving his hand. One loud rumbling sound later, a small water-clone of Tim popped out of the sink.

"Whoa!" Axel yelled, brandishing his fist at the water-clone. Instantly, his hand caught fire, and when it hit the water, everything vanished in a massive cloud of steam.

Axel stared down at his hands in complete bewilderment. Tim stared at the center of the steam cloud in complete shock. Turning to Axel, he asked the question on both their minds:

"What the hell is going on?"

-END OF EPISODE 1-


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